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different from the whore , and that the same is regarded, either as a body , or as an individual : but he neither distinguishes the paragraphs which treat respecting the body , and respecting the individual ; nor the sea and the bottomless pit , from which the beast has its twofold origin ; nor its heads and horns ; nor has he a sufficiently large idea of Rome , if the Papacy were removed. Epicr. pp. 385, 387, 388, 393. Wherefore we will unfold these parts also by observations as distinct as possible. Attend, ye who love the truth.
Obs. 1. The beast of the Apocalypse is the Romish Papacy , which has now reigned through many years. — This is the sum and substance of Proposition 5. Where that ends, there the remainder of this con- sideration begins.
Obs. 2. The beast has both ten horns and seven heads. — John plainly writes this.
Obs. 3. The seven heads are both seven hills and seven kings : and the same are different from the ten horns. — The former part of the Observation is expressly written and extant : the seven heads are the seven hills on which the woman sits , and are seven kings. Nor would it have been possible for one of the heads of the beast to be as it were wounded to death , if it were a hill apart from a king. As to the other part of the Observation, the heads are heads , the horns are horns : the heads are seven , the horns ten. They are not synonyms, nor are the horns changed into heads ; for they are mentioned conjointly. The heads succeed one another : the horns are at the same time. The heads extend themselves through the whole duration of the beast : the horns are at the close of the time of the beast . The heads are of the sub- stance of the beast : the horns are something adscititious. We have here brought together the differences into one accumulated mass : whatever of them is doubtful, will be confirmed by-and-by. The Divine of Halle, without perceiving the difference between the beast of Daniel and the Apocalypse, has not even been able to account for the remarkable difference between the heads, of which the beast of the Apocalypse (not so that in Daniel) has seven, and the ten horns ; and on the contrary, he has made a wide, but unfortunate, separa- tion between the seven heads and the seven kings. He suspects that the kings are Pharaoh, Jeroboam, Ahab, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus (what connection is there between these and the mountains of Pome?), Domitian, Antichrist : but he says that the heads are likewise the kings and horns in one age ; and that by the rooting up of three of them the number ten, under Antichrist, is changed into the number seven. — Comm. Apoc. f. 202.